The problem of parasites: who pays for neglected tropical diseases?
Business Daily
BBC
4.4 • 816 Ratings
🗓️ 13 December 2021
⏱️ 19 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Leishmaniasis may not be a household name in much of the rich world, but the parasitic disease is found in over 90 countries, and can lead to agonising disfigurements, and death. It’s classified as a neglected tropical disease, which means treatment is underfunded and under-researched. We hear from British adventurer and writer Pip Stewart, who contracted Leishmaniasis on an expedition through the jungle of Guyana. She received treatment in the UK, but it was a harrowing experience. Pip explains how her Guyanese friends have to resort to excruciating home remedies to try and stem the parasite. She’s written a book about her ordeal: Life Lessons from The Amazon. We also get the view from Ethiopia, where Dr Helina Fikre explains the difficulties in treating the same parasitic illness. Dr Laurent Fraisse from the Drugs for Neglected Diseases Initiative tells us about his organisation’s search for better treatments, while Dr Madhukar Pai calls for an overhaul of the way tropical diseases are funded. Image: The Leishmaniasis parasite under a magnification factor of 1000. Photo By BSIP/UIG Via Getty Images
Presenter: Vivienne Nunis Producer: Sarah Treanor
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hi, I'm Namulanta Combo and my podcast, Dear Daughter, is available now. It's a handbook to life for daughters everywhere. Find out more at the end of this podcast. |
| 0:14.8 | Today on Business Daily with me, Vivian Nunes, we're in the jungles of Guyana and the lowlands of Ethiopia. |
| 0:22.9 | Just two places where a disease called Leishmaniasis is all too common. |
| 0:28.4 | Never heard of it? |
| 0:29.4 | Well, that's because it's a neglected disease, ignored for decades by modern medicine and big farmer. |
| 0:36.8 | And I was told that if I didn't have quite an |
| 0:39.0 | aggressive treatment that dates from the 1940s are very toxic, former chemotherapy, basically, |
| 0:45.4 | there was a real potential that it could spread to my face and my nose and my soft palate. |
| 0:50.9 | So what can be done to help the millions of patients who suffer from neglected diseases |
| 0:55.6 | every year? For COVID-19, what we hadn't seen in a century with TB, we saw it in one year. Why? Because rich |
| 1:05.4 | folks, privileged folks, white folks develop COVID-19 and money flows like water and every known barrier is overcome. |
| 1:14.2 | But that does not happen for most diseases that affect poor people and affects global south. |
| 1:20.0 | Who pays for neglected diseases? |
| 1:23.2 | That's Business Daily from the BBC. |
| 1:29.0 | Leashmaniasis is a parasitic disease spread by tiny infected sandflies. |
| 1:34.9 | They're almost impossible to detect being only a quarter of the size of a mosquito, |
| 1:40.6 | but they can do a lot of damage. |
| 1:43.0 | In a moment, we'll hear how patients in Ethiopia are battling this disease. |
| 1:47.6 | But first we go to Philippa Stewart, a British adventurer who found herself returning from a trip to South America |
| 1:54.0 | with a bite on her neck that landed her in a London hospital. |
| 1:58.9 | Over to Pith. |
| 2:05.7 | Essentially, I was sort of doing a source to sea descent of Guyana's Essequibo River. It's the biggest river in Guyana and it's the mightiest river as well. It's full of |
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